Financial Reporting + Financial Connection
Because accounting should lead somewhere.
HannumCPA helps privately held businesses turn sound accounting into financial information people can rely on—and helps owners understand and use their financials.
Reporting people can rely on. Connection owners can use.
Financial Reporting and Financial Connection are complementary. One communicates the financials. The other gives the owner a recurring way to understand and use them.
A business may need one or both. Both start with accounting that can support the work.
Financial Reporting
Credible financial information for people who need to rely on it.
Recurring financial statements and organized reporting for the owner and for the people outside the company who depend on its numbers—lenders, sureties, buyers and investors.
Depending on the engagement, that can include comparative and trend reporting, A/R and A/P aging, debt schedules, borrowing-base information, inventory, job and WIP schedules, and notes explaining material changes. Where an outside party requires CPA-prepared or compiled financial statements, HannumCPA scopes that as a separate engagement.
Financial Connection
Helping owners understand and use their financials.
A recurring service built around scheduled Financial Connection Sessions. HannumCPA and the owner work with the company’s actual accounting data together—asking questions, following the answers into the underlying detail and deciding what deserves continued attention.
The financials are not simply presented and filed away. They become the starting point for a useful conversation about the business—understanding what the statements say about financial position, performance, cash flow and trends, and putting that understanding to work in managing the business, evaluating opportunities and making decisions.
Clean Books → Credible Reporting → Clear Understanding.
Clean Books is the foundation. Financial Reporting is how the company’s financials are communicated. Financial Connection is how the owner comes to understand and use them.
It starts with clean books.
Financial Reporting and Financial Connection both depend on accounting that is current, reconciled and explainable.
That means bank, credit-card and key balance-sheet accounts reconciled; a general ledger that has been reviewed; adjusting entries when something is wrong; and a close that happens on a schedule. Those are the conditions under which financial information can be relied on and questions can be followed into the detail with confidence.
HannumCPA can work with the bookkeeper or accounting staff already maintaining the books. The goal is to strengthen the accounting foundation—not automatically replace the people doing the day-to-day work.
Good records matter twice.
Credible records matter to the people relying on the financials. Using those records well matters to the owner running the business. HannumCPA is built around both.
“Poor financial record keeping and owners who fail to use financial data to manage their companies diminish a company’s appeal to investors and affect how a company runs.”
— Zane Tarence
Partner and Managing Director, Founders Advisors LLC
Built around the person relying on it.
A Financial Reporting Package brings the appropriate statements, schedules and explanations into one organized deliverable.
An owner, lender, surety and buyer may need different things from the same set of books. The package is configured around the recipient so the information arrives complete, consistent and easier to understand.
Owners
Performance, what changed and what deserves attention now.
Lenders
Credible statements, the required schedules and context around material changes—on the agreed schedule.
Sureties
Financial and job-level reporting organized around bonding requirements.
Buyers & Investors
Consistent historical statements that were maintained before diligence began.
Less friction for lenders and other outside users.
Reporting becomes harder to use when it arrives with:
- Missing schedules
- Information spread across several emails
- Figures that change from one package to the next
- Changes that are not explained
- Numbers that do not reconcile
- Information rebuilt after someone asks for it
A well-built package removes those before the recipient has to ask. Reporting should provide answers—not create questions.
When a lender, surety or other outside party requires CPA-prepared financial statements, compiled financial statements are scoped and provided as a separate professional engagement.
A Session starts with a question, not a report page.
A scheduled working session with the company’s actual accounting data.
Guided by HannumCPA.
Powered by connected financial information.
- Ask a question.Start with something you actually want to know—not a page in a report.
- Choose the clearest way to see the answer.A chart when a trend tells the story. An explanation when the numbers need context. Both when it helps.
- Follow the answer into the detail.From the statement into the accounts, vendors, customers, jobs, dates and transactions behind it.
- Capture what matters on the Focus Board.An observation, an open question, a concern, an opportunity—noted while the conversation is happening, not reconstructed afterward.
- Choose what to carry forward.When it helps, the owner identifies up to three items for continued attention. The rest stay on the record.
- Finalize the Session.Findings and priorities are preserved in the Session history, so the next Session can begin where this one left off.
A conversation that continues
from month to month.
A Financial Connection Session is not an isolated review of financial statements. Questions and observations that deserve further attention are captured on the Focus Board. When it helps, the owner can identify up to three priorities to carry forward; the rest remain preserved in the Session history.
Each new Session builds on what was learned before, while decisions and execution stay with the owner. Owners are not expected to log into software and work the business out alone. Every Session is facilitated by HannumCPA.
Start with a real business question.
Then follow the answer into the financial information underneath it.
- Why did equipment rental increase over the last six months?
- Which vendors drove the increase?
- What happened to gross margin?
- Which customers account for the change?
- What is driving the A/R increase?
- How are particular jobs performing?
Because the financial statements remain connected to the accounting data underneath them, a question like these can be followed from the statement into the accounts, vendors, customers, jobs, dates and transactions involved—and shown as a chart, an explanation or both.
The technology performs the calculation, retrieval, visualization and explanation. HannumCPA applies CPA review, financial judgment and knowledge of the business. Ask the Financials is used within a facilitated Session; it does not replace that judgment.
The financials stay connected to the detail.
A financial statement should not be a dead end.
HannumCPA’s financial reporting system is built from extracted accounting data—the actual transactions—and retains the detail behind every line of the financial statements. That is what makes it possible to move from a statement-level question into the vendors, transactions, customers, jobs, dates or accounts contributing to it.
The system supports the work. CPA review and judgment remain central to it.
Rhythm beats rescue.
Good financial information should already exist before a lender asks, a covenant deadline arrives, a surety needs an update or a buyer begins diligence.
The accounting should already be current. The reporting should already be credible. Significant changes should already be understood. Recurring reporting and recurring Sessions create that rhythm.
What happens when the reporting isn’t ready?
A founder’s real-world story of how messy financials complicated acquisition diligence, contributed to a failed LOI and consumed time while the financial information was rebuilt.
Practical Founders Podcast
“Messy Financials Killed a Good LOI and Slowed a Profitable SaaS Sale.”
Built around the year between tax returns.
HannumCPA is not a tax firm and is not a volume bookkeeping firm. Tax preparation and planning can remain with the company’s tax CPA. The bookkeeper can keep the books.
HannumCPA works in between: throughout the year, making the accounting credible and the reporting useful to the people who rely on it—and helping the owner understand and use the financials.
Is your financial reporting ready?
See the reporting—and the owner’s connection to it—through the eyes of the people who rely on the numbers. Choose a perspective and answer based on what normally happens, not what could be produced with enough time.
Owner / Borrower perspective
Lender perspective
Surety perspective
Buyer / Investor perspective
Where should the accounting lead?
If the business needs more credible reporting, a stronger connection to the financials, or both, let’s talk about the rhythm and level of CPA involvement that make sense.